THE LONGEST DAY--A Review In Salute To Veterans Day (November 11, 2011)

Rating: 10/10 (11 November 2011)

What is there to say about 20th Century Fox and its legendary and cantankerous studio chief Darryl Zanuck's monstrous 1962 World War II epic THE LONGEST DAY that hasn't already been said? Taken from Cornelius Ryan's excellent book of the same name (with Ryan and various others working on the screenplay) about the D-Day invasion of June 6, 1944, an invasion officially known as Operation Overlord, THE LONGEST DAY shows how numerous elements of planning and chance helped bring about the single biggest military campaign in history, one that led to the eventual end of Hitler's Third Reich. And for this, Zanuck had assembled a massive crew in which three directors (the legendary Andrew Marton for the U.S.; Ken Annakin for the Brits; and Bernhard Wicki for the Germans), special effects men, and a huge cast of Hollywood stars put themselves in service of this epic true story.
While certain elements are inevitably fictionalized, notably elements of the landing itself (which, as SAVING PRIVATE RYAN's opening sequence shows, wasn't a cakewalk by any stretch of the imagination), the film does capture the behind-the-scenes planning amongst the top men and officers on both sides of the conflict, including the Germans, whose soldiers are seen accurately in this film as basic foot soldiers just doing their job, and not the goose-stepping Nazi goons in Berlin who sent twenty million people, including plenty of their own, to their deaths. At three hours, this still may be a lot for people to take in, even if their attention spans haven't been warped by the sound and fury of war movies past and present. On the other hand, if the length of the film is a bit much, and the film itself is old-fashioned by today's standards, there is always that unbelievable gathering of Hollywood heavyweights to keep one's attention focused: John Wayne (who, ironically, never served in World War II), Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Rod Steiger, Robert Wagner, Edmond O'Brien, Robert Ryan, Sean Connery (just as he ascended to stardom as James Bond), Roddy McDowall, Red Buttons, Peter Lawford, Richard Beymer, Paul Anka, Fabian, Richard Burton, Richard Todd, and tons of others. All of this was done at what was then considered an exorbitant cost of $10 million (though Fox had poured $40 million into CLEOPATRA at the same time, and almost went bankrupt doing so), and it became one of the biggest moneymakers of its day, as well as the most commercially successful black-and-white film until Spielberg's 1993 masterpiece SCHINDLER'S LIST.
Unlike a lot of war films of its time, THE LONGEST DAY, while stirring and stunning, doesn't make any heavy pretenses or apologies towards patriotism, because it was understood that Operation Overlord was an absolute necessity in order to save Europe and the world at large; as such, the gravity of the situation was enough to unite everybody. Those men who fought that day, regardless of their nationalities, are to be saluted for their courage and bravery; and even though it may have been surpassed by SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, THE LONGEST DAY still remains one of Hollywood's great war films, one to be remembered for many more decades to come.